Pakistan Poverty Alleviation Fund (PPAF) here on Monday organised a national consultation on humanitarian effectiveness and response in Pakistan. The consultation was held in preparation for the World Humanitarian Summit 2016 and was the last in a series of consultations around four UNOCHA selected themes.
The consultation was chaired by Dr Hany El Banna, President and Founder of The Humanitarian Forum UK-an affiliate of the PPAF. PPAF chose to focus on two of the themes-reducing vulnerability and managing risk; and managing people in conflict. PPAF adopted a dual approach to add value to this interaction, keeping in perspective its role as sector develop.
Dr Hany El Banna led the session and emphasised to put beneficiaries first by building trust between different communities, organisations and individuals to maximise the effectiveness of humanitarian action. The joint working of humanitarian and development organisations of all sizes internationally can play effective role in addressing calamities in future. He added that through training, good governance, co-operation and maintaining humanitarian standards would create stronger and efficient networks that could making the most of resources, learning from each other and foster innovation. The step one was concluded before the consultation and involved PPAF partners in every province conducting focal group discussions with community members previously affected by a disaster or conflict situation. These findings were presented during the consultation by partner representatives.
CEO PPAF Qazi Azmat Isa remained fully involved in the consultation and concluded the day by emphasising the importance of having communities' voices heard before everyone else. He said as an apex institution, PPAF had always remained on the forefront to respond the natural calamities under relief, early recovery, reconstruction, and rehabilitation projects. He said PPAF managed reconstruction of 122,000 seismically-safe houses affected by 2005 earthquake.
He further said PPAF also played a significant part in facilitating return of over 900 families from Rajanpur to Dera Bugti. The 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013 monsoon rains and subsequent floods stranded millions of people and damaged their assets. PPAF was the first one to provide food and non-food items (quilts, hygiene kits), mobile medical assistance and shelters to the affectees of these floods. He said PPAF was also on the forefront to respond to the plight of the earthquake affectees in various parts of Balochistan in September 2013. In all these programmes and interventions, PPAF never compromised over its core values of transparency, accountability and inclusion. Ms Samia Liaquat Ali Khan, Group Head, Compliance & Quality Assurance, PPAF summarised the key points of the group discussion.
Senior representatives from more than 25 organisations including directors from NDMA, Country Representative from MDTF, Country Head of Pakistan Humanitarian Forum, Country Director, Islamic Relief, Country Director, Muslim Charities Forum, Country Director, Hope 87, Director Development Studies, PIDE, REDR-UK, National Humanitarian Forum, Embassy of Italy and PPAF partner organisations attended the consultation. The Humanitarian Forum is a global network of key organisations from Muslim donors and recipient countries and their counterparts in Western regions.
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